What is Microlearning?

Fred Lu

May 18, 2017 • 1 min read

Nowadays, we avoid books with more than 150 pages and tune out presentations after about 18 minutes (hence the power and popularity of TED Talks). And why not? Thanks to professor Google and coach YouTube, virtually anything we could ever want to know is available in seconds with next to no effort. How does it influence instructional design and adult learning…?

Given the appeal and expectation of instantly gratified information needs, it’s no surprise that organizations are embracing the expediency of microlearning—bite-sized bursts of tightly focused content, designed for just-in-time consumption and multi-device delivery.

What so good about microlearning? Let’s chop up our (not-so-micro) definition and chew on the pieces:

just-in-time consumption supports simultaneous application of context-specific training—e.g., viewing a tutorial while performing a task (as opposed to forgetting how to do something days or weeks after completing a traditional course).

multi-device delivery (to smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops) provides content when and where it most benefits learners—e.g., while preparing for a meeting in the hotel lobby, immediately following a popup error message, after hours in a distraction-free environment.

Shelly Immel
Sep 25, 2018 • 7 min read

In this article, we’ll take a look at Obsidian Learning’s process for creating instructional videos as well as a case study that covers this process to move from a concept to a finished, cohesive video.

Stephen Victor
Apr 10, 2018 • 10 min read

In this post, we will focus on the first stage of ADDIE and describe the methods used by Obsidian Learning for instructional analysis. After a discussion of the activities and outputs of analysis, we'll present an example of a curriculum...